Fidel Castro has debunked any rumours of ill health, saying he does not even
suffer from a headache, as fresh images of him gardening emerge.

After months of absence from the public eye resulting in persistent rumours that he was on his death bed, Fidel Castro has insisted he is in very good health and can’t even remember “what a headache is”.Cuba’s state media published photographs of its revolutionary leader looking the picture of health as he strolled around a farm wearing a straw hat and plaid shirt.

In an accompanying letter penned by the 86-year-old published on Monday, “El Commandante” lashed out at recent reports that he was “near death”.

”Birds of bad omen! I don’t even remember what a headache is,” he wrote, saying said he was offering accompanying photos to “show what liars they are”.

”Although a lot of people in the world are taken in by the organs of information, almost all of which are in the hands of the privileged and the rich that publish these stupidities, people are increasingly believing less and less in them,” he wrote.

Castro, who stepped down as president in 2008 following a long illness and handed power to his brother Raul, had not been seen in public since March when he greeted Pope Benedict XVI during the pontiff’s visit to the Caribbean island.

He stopped contributing his once regular “Reflections” opinion columns in June and his failure to immediately congratulate his friend and confidante Hugo Chavez on his re-election as Venezuela’s president earlier this month fuelled speculation of his demise.

On Sunday, a visiting former Venezuelan vice president released a photo of a meeting he said he had the previous day with Castro in Havana, claiming they spent five hours together discussing politics, history, culture and tourism.

”He had the courtesy of bringing me to the hotel,” Elias Jaua said Sunday, adding that Castro had been “very lucid” and looked “very well.”

The latest photos showed a relaxed looking Castro strolling between trees on what appeared to be farm, supported by a cane. In one, he held Friday’s copy of the Commmunist party’s Granma newspaper.